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Project Management Considerations for Your WordPress Project

Lean, Agile, Waterfall; there are dozens of project management methodologies out there, and each one works to abstract your project into a common series of tasks and formulas.

When it comes to software engineering, this can become complicated. For instance, it can cause issues between developers and managers whose organization styles differ. The manager needs that layer of abstraction to keep track of necessary metrics. The developer, however, can suffer from continual small task fatigue and feelings of being micromanaged.

Regardless of the programming language, framework, or libraries, none of them will perfectly fit into the variety of project management methodologies that exist. So how do we improve processes?

By categorizing the differences between tools. Let’s dig into the distinct features that comprise WordPress, and how they can impact the perspectives of managers and developers.

How to Adapt Your Project Management System to WordPress

To adapt our system, we first have to understand the nuances of WordPress. Of course, we don’t need to take every coding standard or functionality difference into account, but we do need to refer to significant sections that may make a difference. We’ll group these into three categories:

Challenges: Any piece that needs to be planned around when defining tasks, milestones, and implementations for the project.

Risks: Large issues that should be hedged against when possible. These are likely weaknesses in the framework that may push back development if they come to fruition.

Opportunities: Unique benefits in the framework that may provide additional features, make development more efficient, or in some way provide a competitive or internal advantage.

The difficulty with identifying these sections is that while they can mostly be learned through research and preparation, many are simply experienced during the attempt. In addition, defining them requires critical evaluation from both developers and managers, which may not always occur.

To adapt your current project management system to WordPress, let’s take a look at the unique Challenges, Risks, and Opportunities that are commonly faced.

Unique Challenges of Using WordPress

Every Content Management System by nature has its own set of downsides. With the involvement of different parties possessing different goals, compromises are bound to happen. Whether it’s users sacrificing customization or developers losing maintenance ease, something has to give. Here are some of the challenges using WordPress presents:

Using an Open-Source Base

Having an open-source base brings with it a bevy of pros and cons. As far as the challenges that are brought on by this, here are the most important:

Code-Base Maintenance

WordPress’s open-source base means that you’ll benefit from regular improvements to the system, but have very little control over those improvements. If a particular bug or feature change is an issue with your build, there is no guarantee of when it will be dealt with. Of course, you can always contribute to the base itself to speed things along, but with so many users, your addition may not be approved. After all, what you have in mind may not be the best solution for most users.

Dealing With Updates

To combat this, you can modify your own codebase or extend it as necessary, but this creates a new set of challenges. If you’ve created a workaround, you will need to be aware of changes to the central codebase that may alter or correct your solution in the future. If you’ve modified the codebase, you will need to be aware that updating WordPress core may alter the functionality that you’ve built, and plan accordingly.

Building Non-Generalist Sites

Because of the sheer number of websites that rely on WordPress, it’s likely that there will come a time when your site and the future of WordPress might be at odds. This becomes more true as your site moves away from what a typical WordPress site might look like.

To counteract this, try to work within WordPress’s constraints as much as possible, to minimize any issues that might arise from future updates. If while planning your project a large portion seems to be fighting the core rather than benefiting from it, consider using another CMS. Otherwise, you can also advise clients against updating WordPress after the project launches, though that brings with it a new set of challenges.

“Piecemeal” Development

The last major challenge to be aware of is the separation of components within WordPress. The divided structure of plugins, themes, and core can be a great tool for planning and hierarchy, but introduces additional third-party software.

Plugins and themes that are being used, but have not been created in-house, should receive an extra level of care. Take the time to do a proper discovery of these components to deal with possible complications.

Unique Risks of Using WordPress

Risks are a level beyond challenges, typically indicating issues that could be catastrophic to a project or whose solutions rest outside of development itself. Take a look at the two biggest that I’ve run into:

Security Issues

With code coming from multiple sources, it’s inevitable that sometimes a bug or exploit will come to light that might leave your project vulnerable. While these issues are typically fixed within days of exposure, the time in-between can be especially hazardous.

Because of the large number of sites using WordPress, exploits become well known quickly and can potentially be utilized en masse. Making sure that your project uses a variety of security measures can help to reduce the risk during those couple of days, but sometimes the only solution is to wait for a patch.

Inclusion of Third-Party Projects

Plugins are one of the most important features for many WordPress users. On the development side, however, plugins introduce unknown elements. Since they can be upgraded separately from the rest of the system (and potentially by your client), utilizing plugins as a key component in your project could be problematic later on.

Additionally, plugins need to be properly vetted before inclusion, otherwise you risk the potential of including dangerous code within your project.

Unique Benefits of Using WordPress

WordPress may have its own risks and challenges, but it has plenty of benefits as well. After all, it’s the most popular CMS on the web for a reason. Here are the pros to the cons above:

Using an Open-Source Base

We talked about the downsides of an open-source base, but there are many upsides as well. Using WordPress is free, and it boasts a wide range of documentation as well as extensive tutorials around the internet. This means that developers can quickly get up to speed on your project, and expanding your team’s knowledge during a project isn’t as arduous a task.

The other major benefit of the open-source base is the multitudes of people that work together to make it happen. A team of a handful of individuals could make something similar, but it’s unlikely to happen at the same pace and quality as WordPress.

Having many varied developers contributing to the code, paired with structured reviews, means that your projects are built on a solid, quality source. Having a large number of contributors also speeds along production, allowing features to be added quickly and patches to be issued in limited timeframes.

Robust Third-Party Solution Availability

WordPress boasts an extensive array of plugins, themes, and code snippets that can help streamline the production process. By utilizing these third-party solutions, you can quickly prototype—and even implement—entirely finished components into your project, offering additional features and efficiency.

Even if a plugin doesn’t quite do what you want, the most popular ones adhere to WordPress coding standards, making them easily adaptable to your needs.

Compartmentalized Design

A predefined and well-structured hierarchy and template system can help projects start off in an organized way. Instead of spending time deciding on engineering structures, WordPress allows efficient work within a well-established system. In addition, it’s suitable for most project management systems and allows for multiple pieces of the project to be developed simultaneously.

This compartmentalized design also makes it easy to determine where issues originate, and to maintain code throughout a project’s iterations.

Aligning Team Perspectives

Taking a Content Management System like WordPress and breaking it down into how managers and developers perceive it can streamline communication overall. Integrating these perspectives in your project management style should alleviate some anxiety with your developers. It gives them the benefit of the doubt, while adding some much-needed understanding to the team.

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Did I miss any key parts of WordPress that project managers should be aware of? Let me know in the comments!